Nuclear weapons and nuclear power protest arrests over Mother’s Day weekend on both U.S. coasts

PILGRIM NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, MASSACHUSETTS

Four members of a Cape Cod-based activist group were arrested on Sunday, May 11 for walking onto Pilgrim nuclear power plant property to plant flowers. Cape Downwinder members Susan Carpenter, Sarah Thacher, Diane Turco and Mary Conathan were arraigned Monday in Plymouth District Court on charges of trespassing.

Activists from Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, Washington staged a tea party on May 10 at the main gate of Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, the West Coast home port for the U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarine fleet. Eight protesters walked onto the roadway in successive waves, briefly blocking the entrance, and offered tea and cookies to the Washington State Patrol officers standing in the median. Officers escorted them from the roadway and cited them for walking on the roadway where prohibited.

In pouring rain, Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin joined the Shut It Down Affinity Group on Friday, May 9 to block the gate at Entergy Corporation’s Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. Police arrested twelve women for unlawful trespass. No court date has been set. Before blocking the Vermont Yankee gate, the women stood with balloons and banners across from nearby Vernon Elementary School to urge love for mother earth as Mother’s Day approached.

Activists arrested at drone protests in Maryland and Wisconsin

AIR SHOW AT VOLK FIELD

Six people vigiled at the gates of Volk Field drone base in Wisconsin on May 17, flying kites and displaying a new banner and colorful signs saying “Fly Kites, Not Drones”. Two of them, Bonnie Block and Fr. Jim Murphy, then entered the Air National Guard facility during the open house taking place that day. When the pair refused to stop handing out the leaflets they had brought with them, they were arrested. They were taken to jail, where they were processed, charged with trespass and disorderly conduct and released.

After getting no response to a letter to the director of the National Security Agency, twenty activists went to Fort Meade, Maryland on May 3 to seek a meeting. First, they gathered alongside Route 32 to read the names of children killed by U.S. drone strikes and hold a die-in to represent victims of a drone attack. The activists then headed to the guard station to seek a meeting with someone in a policy-making role. NSA police arrested Ellen Barfield, Marilyn Carlisle and Manijeh Saba when they refused to leave the roadway outside the base’s gates. They face three federal charges – failure to comply with a lawful order, entering protected property and disorderly conduct.

In mid-May, Washington, D.C. activists helped kick off SOA Watch’s poster campaign to remember the martyrs and expose the killers. On May 14, a group came together to paste a giant mural on the side of a building in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The police approached them after they were done, and four of the activists – Dominique Diaddigo-Cash, Gail Taylor, Maria Luisa Rosal and Nico Udu-gama – were handcuffed, arrested and held for 6 hours before being charged with “defacing public or private property.”

Articles by Kathy Kelly and Dr. Hakim follow Jeju Island trip

by Kathy Kelly, May 24

Jeju Island, South Korea – For the past two weeks, I’ve been in the Republic of Korea (ROK), as a guest of peace activists living in Ganjeong Village on ROK’s Jeju Island. Gangjeong is one of the ROK’s smallest villages, yet activists here, in their struggle against the construction of a massive naval base, have inspired people around the world.

Since 2007, activists have risked arrests, imprisonment, heavy fines and wildly excessive use of police force to resist the desecration caused as mega-corporations like Samsung and Daelim build a base to accommodate U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines for their missions throughout Asia. The base fits the regional needs of the U.S. for a maritime military outpost that would enable it to continue developing its Asia Pivot strategy, gradually building towards and in the process provoking superpower conflict with China.

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